indignitas

Forms

indignitās f (genitive indignitātis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin indignus (“unworthy”) + -tās.^[2][1][3] indignus is the negative of dignus (“worthy”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Italic *dek-no- (“worthy”) and Proto-Indo-European *deḱ-no-, a derivative of the root of decet (“it is fitting”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL records it from the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero on; the treatise's author says he cannot put the outrageousness of the deed into words.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

It is the quality of being unworthy: of actions, shamefulness or outrageousness, and of people, lack of merit or baseness, as when Cicero sets a man's worth against his unworthiness.^[2][5] It is also unworthy treatment, an indignity or humiliation, and the feeling it causes: Cicero writes of having endured all the indignity and trouble of approaching a powerful man, and asks whether his own indignation can stay silent.^[2] Church Latin glosses it unworthiness, baseness.^[6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero of baseness and of humiliation.^[2][7]
• 1580s – English indignity is borrowed from it.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. Unworthiness; of acts, shamefulness, outrageousness; of persons, baseness, vileness.^[2][5][6][1]
2. Unworthy treatment, an indignity, humiliation.^[2][1]
3. A sense of indignity, indignation.^[2]

Related words

• indignus
• dignitās

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com